


Altea Memorial Hospital

by xazliin



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grey's Anatomy, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-25 22:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13844427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xazliin/pseuds/xazliin
Summary: They’re a lot closer to each other than Lance realizes. Breathing the same air. He can look down into the blue flecks of Keith’s eyes. He can almost smell the shampoo Keith uses.“Stop looking at me like that,” Keith says. A blush rises to the apples of his cheeks.“Like what?” Lance bites his lip to keep from smiling too much.Keith looks away from Lance’s face. He turns his head to the ceiling, then back to Lance. “Like you’ve seen me naked.”





	Altea Memorial Hospital

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this has caused me to have nothing but Grey's Anatomy related dreams for the past week.

Episode One: Forty-Eight Hours

 

 

  
This is not good. This is very not good.

Lance stares down at the stranger on his couch--the stranger whose arms Lance woke up naked in about ten minutes ago. He has dark hair, pale skin, pink lips.

Lance tugs on his own hair. As much as he hates it, he can see how this happened. Lance pulls the blanket off the guy, wrapping it around his waist. He tries his best to look away from the guy’s exposed body. Biting his lip, Lance tries to shake him awake, poking the man’s chest with his foot.

“Hm?” the man groans, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“You have to go,” Lance says.

The guy is fully awake now, and Lance can see him raking his eyes over Lance’s body. “ _Oh-kay_ ,” he responds flatly.

“Seriously,” Lance insists. “I’m late. Which is not something you want to be on your first day.”

Sitting up, the guy asks, “You actually live here?”

“No,” Lance says instinctively before correcting himself, “Well, yes. Kind of.”

The man shoots Lance a questioning eyebrow. He fishes his pants up off the floor and moves to shuffle them on. “Kind of?”

“I moved here two weeks ago,” Lance answers. “It was my aunt’s. I’m selling it.”

It’s not a _bad_ house. It’s a little big. Way too expensive for Lance to afford on his own. Aunt Carolyn left it to him in her will. She never married, never had any children, which makes the unreasonable amount of bedrooms all the more questionable.

“We don’t have to do the thing,” the man says, stretching his t-shirt over his head. “Exchange the details, pretend we care.”

Lance blinks. He didn’t have to be so blunt about it. “Alright. I’m going to go upstairs and shower, and when I get back here you probably won’t be here. So, uh, goodbye,” Lance tries his best to remember the guy’s name. He certainly remembered it last night.

After a beat the guy says, “Keith.”

“Keith,” Lance smiles. He holds out his hand for Keith to shake. “Lance.”

“Goodbye, Lance,” Keith smiles back at him. It’d be too easy for Lance to stay here all day with him.

Lance bites his lip, pulling his hand away. “Uh, goodbye,” He repeats. Lance turns around, jogging up the stairs with the blanket covering him.

 

 

 

  
_“Each of you comes here today hopeful. Wanting in on the game. A month ago you were in med school being taught by doctors. Today, you are the doctors. The seven years you spend here as a surgical resident will be the best and worst of your life. You will be pushed to the point. Eight of you will switch to an easier specialty. Five of you will crack under the pressure and two of your will be asked to leave. This is your starting line. This is your arena.”_  
  
Lance has done it. He's made it. More years of studying and med school than could be healthy for any person has all led him to this moment--this place: Altea Memorial Hospital.  
  
This is the first day of Lance’s life.  
  
He finds an empty locker in the intern’s quarters, changing into his baby blue scrubs as quickly as he can amidst the shuffling and noises of the other surgical interns. There are about twenty of them in the program. They all met each other at the mixer a few nights ago. Somehow, Lance can’t remember any of their names. There are about twenty or so surgical interns. He got to have a second look at all of them during Dr. Shirogane, the head of surgery’s, introduction speech.  
  
“Hey,” the person beside him says. She’s probably the shortest adult Lance has ever seen. “I’m Pidge Holt.”

Lance holds out his hand for a handshake, “Lance McClain.”

“Cool,” Pidge takes his hand, adjusting the lock on her scrub locker.

“Who’d you get assigned to?”  
  
“Altea,” Pidge answers.  
  
That’s something Lance remembers; everyone at the mixer was calling Dr. Altea all sorts of fear-inspiring nicknames. It’s definitely not intimidating. “Really?” Lance smiles at Pidge. “Me too.”  
  
“McClain,” a voice calls from the door. Lance’s stomach explodes into his abdomen. Figuratively, of course. Oh, god. This is actually happening. “Garrett, Holt, Olia.”  
  
He shares a look with Pidge, before they both scramble to the hallway in front of the intern’s room. There are two other interns wearing the same baby blue scrubs and off-white lab coats as they are. At least the other interns look as nervous as Lance feels.

“End of the hallway,” says the man in scrubs Lance is too nervous to pay attention to.

A woman stands with a cup of coffee and a clipboard. She has dark skin and almost-white hair. Her posture exudes the kind of confidence that comes with experience in a hospital. Lance presumes she must be their resident, Doctor Altea.

Pidge begins, “Is that--?”

“The Nazi.” The other female intern in their group finishes.

“The Nazi? I heard them calling her ‘The Dictator,” Pidge says.

The other intern, he has dark skin and black hair, sighs. “Maybe she’s nice? Maybe they just say that because they’re jealous of her talent?”

Nobody dignifies that with a response.

“I expected her to look more,” Lance waves his hands around. “Like a Nazi.” She looks too pretty to be someone called ‘The Nazi’.

They walk the short distance towards Dr Altea.

One of the interns--his hospital ID reads Hunk Garrett--holds out a muffin towards her. "Hi, I'm Hunk. Hunk Garrett."

Dr. Altea stares blankly.

"I brought you a muffin," Hunk continues, voice faltering only a little. "It's homemade."

“I have four rules. Memorize them,” she says, not bothering to respond. Dr Altea speaks with some Australian-British accent Lance has never heard before. She makes a point of glaring at the muffin still in Hunk's hand. “Rule one: Don’t bother sucking up. I already hate you. Nothing you do can change that.” The pager at Altea’s side beeps. She frowns at it, then begins walking.

Lance, Pidge, and the other two interns stare at each other for a moment with no idea what to do. Their resident doesn't slow down. She doesn't check to see if they're following behind.

Altea continues and the four of them hurry to catch up. “Rule two: The nurses will page you. You answer every page at a run. Not a walk. Not a brisk jog. A _run_.”

Lance nearly knocks the other intern--Doctor Meghan Olia--over when they all stop. Dr Altea turns to them and opens the door at her side. "This is an on-call room. Attendings hog them so you sleep when you can, where you can. Rule three: Unless your patient is actually dying, _do not wake me_."

Olia makes some sort of noise. Maybe a chuckle. Possibly a cough. Either way, Altea cuts it off with a glare.

"Also! Make sure the dying patient is not dead when I get there. Not only will you have killed somebody, I would have been woken up for no good reason. Your first shift starts now and lasts forty-eight hours. Does everyone understand?"

"That was only three rules," Lance points out. He thinks he mostly succeeds from not flinching at the glare she sends him. "You said there were four."

As if on cue, Dr Altea's pager starts beeping, this time more rapidly than the last. "Rule four," she says, already turning the other direction in her white sneakers. "When I move, you move."

They all trail behind Dr Altea. A shuffle of lab coats and tennis shoes. Lance catches Pidge's eye and in that moment, he thinks he might know what she's thinking. He can see the excitement swirling beneath her pupils.

Today they're doctors. Real surgical interns.

This is going to be a long forty-eight hours.

 

 

 

  
“Emily Biermann, seventeen year old female, new onset seizures intermittent for the past week,” the emergency responder says as Lance helps secure the patient into the stretcher. Lance can barely hear him over the sound of the helicopter. “Lost her I.V. enroute and started grand mal seizing as we descended.”

The group of four interns and Altea latch on to the stretcher. Lance feels a strong wind burning his face as they wheel the patient into the hospital, her entire body thrasher in the stretcher. They wheel her into the hospital as quickly as they can, taking Emily Biermann into a patient room.

“Turn her on her side,” Altea says, and they spur into action. Altea instructs Lance and the other interns as they give Emily Biermann an I.V. to stop her seizure.

“What do we have, Dr. Altea?” A man in a white lab coat and the same Australian accent as Altea asks. Lance definitely remembers him from the mixer. Doctor Coran Smythe, Altea Memorial’s cardiac surgeon. Altea hands Lacey’s chart to Smythe. “Let’s shotgun her,” Smythe says after skimming through.

“Every test we have to find out what’s causing these seizures,” Altea clarifies. “Meghan, you’re on labs. Katie and Hunk, patient work-ups. Lance, take Emily down for a C.T.. Take care of her, she’s your responsibility.”

“Yes ma’am,” Lance says to Altea and she glares at him. Luckily, Altea leaves the room without calling him out, seemingly having more important things to do.

 

 

 

  
The elevator doors open in front of Lance for what seems like the twentieth time in the past fifteen minutes. “Are you lost?” Emily asks gently. She gained consciousness about ten of those fifteen minutes ago.

“Nope,” Lance says, pushing the stretcher forward. “I know exactly where I’m going. Do I look like the kind of person to not know where they’re going?”

Emily smiles something small and shy, “Kind of.”

Lance feels himself frown. He pushes her around one corner, then another. And another. He totally knows where he’s going. “You in school?” Lance asks Emily. He hopes all the not-at-all-being-lost isn’t making her nervous.

She nods. “I’m a junior,” she says. “Missing cheer practice right now, actually.”

“Cheer practice?” Lance asks, taking another turn. He didn’t peg her as the type. Another turn takes Lance back to the elevator he’d just gotten off of. Or maybe it’s a new elevator. Maybe Lance should get a map.

“My mom convinced me to try out. She said it’d help me make friends but--” Emily cuts herself off, biting her lip.

After pushing the stretcher into the elevator, Lance pushes the button to take them to the fourth floor. “But what?” At Emily’s reluctance to answer he adds, “It’s okay. I promise I won’t tell anybody.”

The elevator starts moving. C.T. is probably on the fourth floor. It better be on the fourth floor.

Eventually Emily says, “I’m not that great at cheerleading.” She laughs a dry, unhappy laugh. “I don’t even know why they let me join. The rest of those girls--they’ve been doing cheer or gymnastics or like _badminton or whatever_ since they were four years old.”

“That sounds intense.”

“I nearly broke my leg the other day, you know that?”

The doors of the elevator open and Lance fills with relief. He remembers being shown this floor on the tour Dr. Shirogane gave them. If he’s right, C.T. should be just around the corner.

Emily continues talking, “We were doing this triple-double-twirly-flip thing--I don’t even know what it’s called. I was supposed to catch this girl.” Her voice goes distant. “I was supposed to catch her and I just didn’t.”

Lance finally spots the C.T. scan room door. “I’m sure she understands,” he tries his best to comfort her.

Emily snorts, “I doubt it.”

The C.T. shows nothing to indicate the cause of Emily’s seizures. Neither do any of the other tests. Nor her medical history. According to everything, she should be a perfectly healthy teenager.

Which means Lance has no answer when Mrs. Biermann, Emily’s mother, demands, “What’s wrong with my daughter?”

Mrs. Biermann is dressed in a plum-coloured blazer and dark jeans. A bun tight enough for no single hair to be out of place adorns the top of her head.

“I--” Lance opens his mouth, but she interrupts him.

“Her last doctor said she might need surgery. What will the surgery do?” Mrs. Biermann steps closer into Lance’s space. Close enough he can feel her coffee-stained breath on his face. “When will the surgery be? When can she go home? She’s a cheerleader, you know? She needs to be back at home for a cheer tournament next week.”

“I--” Lance tries again, only this time he can’t find any words. He doesn’t remember half of the things Mrs. Biermann said--she spoke so quickly. “I’m not her doctor,” he settles on. “Well, I’m one of her doctors, but I’m not her...main doctor.

Mrs. Biermann stares at him, into his soul.

Lance gestures towards the door about as awkwardly as he possibly could. “I’ll go get them,” he says before turning around and leaving the room.

He finds Dr. Altea outside the conference room where he last saw her. A clipboard sits in her hand as she leans up against the wall. “What do you need, Dr. McClain?”

“The mom is asking questions,” Lance says. “Do you answer them or does Dr. Smythe?”

“Dr. Smythe isn’t on the case anymore,” Altea says, not even looking up from the clipboard. “It’s gone to the new neurosurgeon, Dr. Kogane. He’s talking with the Chief right now.” She tilts her head towards the conference room door.

“What about Mrs. Bierma--”

“I’m sure he’ll be out in a minute, McClain.”

Fiddling with the hems of his lab coat, Lance stands beside Altea in silence. It’s still better than spending another second in the same room as Emily’s mom. Even though Lance knows she just cares about her daughter, the woman is terrifying.

The door to the conference room opens.

Out steps Dr. Shirogane, chief of surgery, tall with black and white hair peppered hair. He isn’t old. Not near it. But he’s the type of person, Lance suspects, who started greying in his twenties.

Alongside Dr. Shirogane, is a pale, black-haired man. A pale, black-haired man who was sleeping on Lance’s couch this morning. The same pale, black-haired man who Lance _slept with_ last night.

This cannot be happening.

“Dr. McClain,” Shirogane says. Lance didn’t realize he’d been staring at Keith--no, not Keith--Dr. Kogane until he’s faced with Dr. Kogane’s raised eyebrow. “What do you need?”

“Mrs. Biermann, the girl with the seizures mother, she has questions,” Lance tries to say. He’s not in the right frame of mind to care if he said it exactly as he planned.

“Great,” Shirogane claps his hands. “This is Dr. Kogane, the new head of neuro. He can help her with the questions.”

Ignoring the suspicious look Altea shoots him, Lance gives his best attempt at a smile. “Pleased to meet you, Dr. Kogane.”

The two of them shake hands for the second time in one day. It feels like Keith is mocking him when he says, “Likewise, Dr. McClain.”

 

 

 

  
Keith leads Lance into the staff stairwell off the right side of the hallway. Or maybe Lance leads Keith into the stairwell. It doesn’t really matter. There are more important things to worry about. The door to the stairwell clicks shut, effectively separating them from the rest of the hospital.

“Doctor McClain,” Keith says. He runs his hands through his hair and tugs.

“Dr. McClain?” Lance cocks his head to the side. “This morning it was Lance, now it’s Dr. McClain?”

Keith slips his hands into the pockets of his lab coat. “We should…” he trails off. “We should pretend it never happened.”

“What never happened?” Lance slathers on the sleaziest grin he can think of. He tries to stop himself, he really does. Teasing Dr. Kogane like this is just too much fun. “You sleeping with me?”

“ _Jesus Christ_ ,” Keith groans. “You know this can’t happen. You understand this?”

“I understand that I was drunk and you seduced me.”

“I did not--” Keith starts raising his voice, but cuts himself off. He starts talking again at a much lower volume. Nearly a whisper. “I did not ‘seduce’ you.”

Lance grins again. “You did. You totally did. I was sitting there all innocently and you seduced me.”

Keith chuckles, low and hearty. It’s a good look on him. “If anything you were the one who seduced me.”

They’re a lot closer to each other than Lance realizes. Breathing the same air. He can look down into the blue flecks of Keith’s eyes. He can almost smell the shampoo Keith uses.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Keith says. A blush rises to the apples of his cheeks.

“Like what?” Lance bites his lip to keep from smiling too much.

Keith looks away from Lance’s face. He turns his head to the ceiling, then back to Lance. “Like you’ve seen me naked.”

Biting his lip doesn’t stop the smile from taking over Lance’s face.

“Dr. McClain,” Keith’s face is serious, but his tone radiates warmth. “I’m your attending. You get why this can’t happen.”

“Whatever you say.”

Lance tracks Keith’s eyes as they dart all over Lance’s face. He almost misses the ghost of a smile that catches Keith’s lips. “I’ll, uh,” Keith stutters. “I’ll see you later.”

“Yep,” Lance says and Keith turns his back. He walks through the door and out into the hallway. Before following, Lance counts to forty in his head. He figures Dr. Kogane would appreciate the gesture.

 

 

 

  
Lance finds Pidge and Hunk sharing a bag of sour keys in an empty patient room. Matching piles of textbooks are stacked on either side of them. “What’s this?” Lance asks, closing the door behind him.

Neither of them look up from their textbooks.

“Smythe is making us research for his appendectomy tomorrow morning,” Pidge answers. “Winner gets to scrub in.”

Lance hops onto the bed across from them. The patient rooms Lance has seen usually have one or two beds in them. The rooms are pretty much identical; brown painted walls, white panel ceilings. A garbage can sits beside the door.

He’s maybe a little jealous. “Attendings actually do that? It’s only our first day.”

“Nah,” Hunk says through a mouthful of sour keys. “I think he’s just crazy.”

Pidge snorts, “ _Please_. Smythe is beyond crazy. He’s crazy in a clown car with a shotgun.”

“I have to tell you something.” Lance says before he realizes he wants to.

“Okay?” Hunk flips the page of his textbook.

He takes a deep breath. “You can’t react or anything. No smiling or laughing. And no faces. Especially no faces.”

“Alright.”

Lance closes his eyes. “I slept with the new neurosurgeon.”

Hunk and Pidge look up at him for the first time.

“He’s been here for like two hours. Chill, McClain,” Pidge says. Lance gets the feeling she’s judging him.

“ _Not now_ ,” Lance rubs the bridge of his nose, looking down into his lap. “Last night. Before I knew he is...who he is.” He leans back, bumps his head into the wall.

“Well this is certainly something,” Hunk says. At least he isn’t being obviously negative about it.

Pidge makes a face at him. The exact kind of face Lance told her not to. The kind of face where her mouth is open in this shocked sort of almost-smile. “What did you get yourself into?”

“Shut up!” Lance runs his hand over his face. “It’s not that bad.”

“Hey,” Pidge holds her hands up in front of her, “I never said it wasn’t good. Was it not good?"

At Pidge’s cackle, Lance closes his eyes and counts to ten. He does this yoga breathing exercise his sister taught him when she convinced him to go on that ‘reiki retreat’ in college.

“I will murder you.”

Pidge cackles louder.

The moment is broken by Lance’s pager beeping loud and angry at him. He looks down at it. “ _Shit_ ,” he hisses, standing as quickly as possible. “9-1-1 for Emily Biermann.”

“Good luck!” Hunk calls as Lance speeds out of the room.

It only takes sprinting up one flight of stairs and through one wrong hallway of the patient wing to get to Emily’s room. When he does, there are what seems like fifteen nurses fluttering around the room.

Emily Biermann is seizing.

A nurse says something off the Lance’s left, but he doesn’t hear her. He can’t stop watching the girl thrashing in the hospital bed. Lance is stuck, frozen in one spot. The nurse keeps talking. He can tell she’s nearly shouting at him to do something.

“Dr. McClain!” He hears her say. Her voice is soft. Sweet. “You need to tell us what you want to do!”

Okay, Lance can do this.

He grabs Emily’s chart off the end of the bed. “Is she full on Lorazepam?”

“She’s had four milligrams,” the nurse answers.

_The seizure should have stopped by now_ , Lance thinks. “Have you paged Dr. Altea and Dr. Kogane?”

“The Lorazepam isn’t working,” another nurse says, as if Lance can’t see that himself. They’re all doing things--adjusting I.V.s or holding her still or anything--while Lance just stands there.

“Have you paged Dr. Kogane?” Lance asks more urgently.

The monitor beside Emily’s bed shows her flatlining. Her heart has stopped.

One of the nurses grabs a crash cart and pushes the pads into Lance’s hands. “Charge to 200,” Lance says. If there’s a time his brain ever wants to start working, now is it. He puts the pads on her on her chest, says “Clear”, and tries to shock her heart into working. It doesn’t work.

“Charge to 300,” Lance says. They finish charging and Lance tries again. Her heart still doesn’t start. He charges them to 360, puts them on her chest. “Come on, Emily. Come on,” he chants. “Clear.” Lance shocks her heart one more time.

The heart monitor beeps. Emily Biermann’s heart starts beating. Lance closes his eyes, lets out a silent prayer. He puts the pads back on the crash cart. Lance lets himself feel proud for a moment. He just saved somebody’s life.

Keith walks in through the open door, his shoes squeaking on the linoleum floor. “What happened”

“She had a seizure,” Lance answers. “Her heart stopped.”

“You were supposed to be monitoring her,” Keith frowns. Curse him for being the type of guy to look hot when he’s frowning. Dr. Kogane leans down to examine Emily. “I’ve got her. Just leave. Please.”

Lance takes one last look at Emily, makes sure the heart monitor is still working right, before he leaves. He feels his limbs walk him to the patient room where Hunk and Pidge were before. Through the hallway and down a flight of stairs.

The door swings open. Pidge is still sitting on the bed with a pile of textbooks, Hunk seems to have left. Lance turns to the garbage can beside the door, gags into it. Once he’s recovered, he stands back up. Lance and Pidge make eye contact. “If you ever tell anybody…”

She holds her hands up in front of her.

 

 

 

  
The night passes relatively uneventfully. There aren’t any new traumas Lance is assigned to or any new cases for him to memorize. It’s mostly sitting in either Emily or some other patient’s room making sure they don’t die while Dr. Altea is sleeping. Lance himself gets maybe forty minutes of sleep the whole night. Him and Pidge sleep in ten minute shifts on the beds in the empty patient room. They should probably think of a better name than “empty patient room”.

Around 7am, Lance volunteers to get coffee for him and the rest of the interns from this little cafe attached to the hospital. Hunk and Meghan gave Lance some special frothy, caramel-y orders for him, but he’s too tired to remember anything aside from Pidge’s “Just coffee. Normal, regular coffee”. Lance orders four black coffees from the perky blonde who looks like she’s named Lauren. He adds a cream and two sugars to his own, leaves the other three as they are.

There aren’t many people in the cafe. Only a handful probably. It’s early enough that all the hotshot doctors fancy enough to make their own schedules haven’t come in yet.

A hand appears at the small of Lance’s back and he jumps. “Good morning, Dr. McClain,” Keith’s voice rumbles in his ear. The hand disappears almost as fast as it’d appeared.

“Good morning, Dr. Kogane,” Lance responds.

Keith steps out in front of Lance so they’re facing each other. His dark hair is messier than it was before. He’s wearing a maroon button up shirt under a black blazer, not yet changed into his scrubs. A steaming to-go cup rests in his hand. “I need your help,” Keith says.

“Okay,” Lance smiles. It was so out of nowhere that it was actually a little endearing. He quirks his eyebrow at Keith. “With what?”

“I normally wouldn’t do this,” Keith says, huffing out sheepish almost-laughter. “I have no idea what’s causing Emily Biermann’s seizures. And, I know you’re tired and have more work than you could possibly do, but--If you find out what’s causing her seizures I’ll let you scrub in on the surgery.”

  
“Woah.” Lance feels his eyes widen. That would be a huge opportunity. Lance would be on the inside of an O.R., right next to all the action. Pidge would be so jealous; brain surgery totally trumps appendix.

The pager at Lance’s hip beeps. Keith glances down at it, then back up at Lance. “I’ll see you later, Dr. McClain.”

“Yeah,” Lance says slowly. “Right.”

 

 

 

  
Lance returns to the Intern Room with four lukewarm cups of coffee in his hands. He hands them out to Hunk and Meghan and Pidge. He absolutely has to find out what’s causing Emily’s seizures. Not just for the surgery (although it is quite a motivating factor), but also to help her and make her better. Let her have a life to live.

“This isn’t what I asked for,” Meghan frowns, looking down into her cup.

“What are all the possible causes of intermittent grand mal seizures,” Lance says rather than asks. He downs half his cup of coffee in one swallow and it burns his throat.

Hunk’s eyebrows draw together. “Is this about the Biermann girl?”

“She doesn’t have anoxia, chronic renal failure, or acidosis,” Lance lists. He tends to think out loud when he’s thinking medicine. It’s driven every single one of his roommates insane. “Her C.T.s clean, so it’s not a tumour.”

“Is he okay?” Meghan nudges her shoulder into Pidge.

Sipping her coffee, Pidge srugs, “I have no idea.”

“It could be infection,” Lance drags his fingers through his hair. Except it couldn’t, because she has no white blood cells, no lesions, no fevers, and nothing in her spinal tap. He groans, tugging on his hair.

“Aneurysm?” Pidge says and Lance remembers there are three other people in the room.

Shoving abandoned textbooks out of the way, Lance swings himself up on to the hospital bed. “No headaches or blood on the C.T..”

“Drug use?” Hunk asks. Lance shakes his head. “Pregnancy? Trauma?”

“Nope.”

They’re running out of answers. There should be something, anything to indicate what’s causing this. She needs the chance to turn into her own person. To do what she wants to do and not whatever cheer-squad-thing her mother forces her into.

“Oh my god,” Lance says, the realization hitting him in the face. “I need to find Dr. Kogane right now.”

He stands up, nearly knocking stacks of textbooks to the floor.

“What? Why?” Meghan’s squinting at him like she has no idea what’s going on.

Pidge’s, on the other hand, are shining. “ _McClain_ ,” she gasps, faux-scandalized. “I don’t know what you did to McDreamy, but please share your tricks with the rest of us.”

Lance pretends he doesn’t hear that. It’s necessary to stop his eyes from rolling into the back of his head.

He leaves the room as quickly as he can, tossing his togo cup into a garbage bin. It hasn’t been that long since they last saw each other, but Keith could be anywhere. Lance guesses. He might be doing morning rounds about this time.

Lace finds him on the inside of an elevator, staring down into a notepad. Finally, Lance thinks, someone in this hospital who doesn’t carry a clipboard everywhere.

“Dr. Kogane,” Lance calls.

Keith looks up at him. His eyes are...beautiful. But that’s not why Lance is here.

Lance puts his hand on the elevator door to stop it from closing. A handful of hospital staff waiting for the elevator glare at him. “Emily’s a cheerleader.”

Dr. Kogane blinks at him. “Yes, well, we still have to save her life.”

“She has no headaches. No neck pain. Her C.T. is clean. There’s no proof of an aneurysm,” Lance explains. He takes a breath. “But what if she has one anyway?”

This time Keith stops the elevator doors from closing. “Explain?”

“She nearly broke her leg at cheer practice. It was practically nothing--the other girl probably had more damage--but what if she hit her head? It was minor enough not to be in her medical history, but she was knocked to the ground.”

“The chances of a minor fall bursting an aneurysm are one in a million, Dr. McClain,” Keith looks back down at his notepad.

Lance’s teeth chew at his lip.

“Literally, one in a million.” Keith closes his eyes. All at once his face goes slack. He looks peaceful. Thoughtful. Lance wonders if this is what he looks like during surgery.

Keith’s eyes snap open. “Let’s go,” he says, walking off the elevator.

Lance nearly has to jog to catch up with him.

They go to a room in the hospital Lance hasn’t been to yet. Emily’s brought in with them. They run more tests, more in-depth, more aneurysm-specific. And sure enough.

“There is is,” Keith points to the computer screen. A dark blue smudge on the screen represents the bleeding. “It’s small but it’s there.”

“She could have gone her entire life without it being a problem,” Lance shifts to get a better look at the monitor. His shoulders brush with Keith’s. Lance knows he’s being ridiculous, but the small amount of contact draws his entire focus.

Keith doesn’t shift away. “Hit in the wrong spot at the wrong time,” he says. “I’ll tell Emily’s parents she’s going in for surgery.”

Lance doesn’t want to move. He wants to stay with his shoulder pressed against Keith’s forever.

“Great job, Dr. McClain,” Keith nods to him, holding eye contact. Lance may be projecting, but Keith looks proud. It’s really not helping the situation. “I’ll see you in the OR.”

As Keith leaves, Lance is confused for a second. Then he remembers what Keith had promised; he gets to scrub in on the surgery. He was so caught up in the moment of Keith and saving Emily and _being a doctor_ that he’d forgotten.

He’d _forgotten_ he could scrub in on a surgery. Lance sounds insane even to himself.

 

 

 

  
Hunk’s patient dies twelve minutes before Lance is supposed to prep Emily for surgery. Lance runs into him--literally, bumps right into him--outside the NICU.

Eyes shining, Hunk steps back. “Sorry,” he says, like it’s his fault Lance wasn’t looking where he was going.

“It’s good,” Lance smooths some of the papers in his hand. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” his voice is rough. Hunk gazes off through the window into the NICU. The window’s there for parents look it at their babies. Most of them were preterm, some of them sick, and some with other serious health issues. “It’s just--,” Hunk sighs. “I wish I never wanted to be a doctor.”

It’s kind of surprising. It’s more surprising however, is how unsurprised Lance is to hear Hunk say that. Being a doctor is hard. Medical internships are hard--med school was hard. “I would have been a good policeman,” Lance agrees. “I’m strategic.”

“My patient died,” Hunk wrings his hands together. “He died while I watched from outside the OR.”

Words evaporate from Lance’s mind. If he had anything to say he could try to make it better. Lance settles on a noncommittal “Oh”.

Hunk doesn’t seem to care. His voice sounds carefully stripped of emotion when he says, “I’ve never felt this helpless before.”

Lance doesn’t make the conscious decision to hug Hunk, it just happens. Hunk is warm and solid and oddly smells like cookies. It’s stabilizing. He hopes it grounds Hunk as much as it does him.

“I’m sorry,” Lance says into Hunk’s shoulder, unsure what exactly he’s apologizing for. It seems like the right thing to say.

Even so, Hunk pats Lance on the back. “Thank you.”

 

 

 

  
It would be so easy for Lance to quit, to turn around and walk away. There are a million reasons he should. But as Lance lathers his hands, scrubs them down outside the OR, he doesn’t think of one.

Watching Keith perform surgery was like nothing else Lance had ever seen. It was elegant and smooth. Every movement seeming perfectly rehearsed. And Lance saw it up close too--he looked in through the microscope as Keith was repairing the hemmorage. Standing up there beside him, it felt...nice. Really nice.

Lance walks into the hallway. He sits himself down on an uncomfortable plastic chair. Keith’s standing across the hallway from him, writing in the same little notepad he had earlier.

“That was such a high,” Lance says. “You think you’re gonna know what it feels like, but... That was amazing.”

A small smirk appears on Keith’s face.

“I have no idea why anyone does drugs.”

The smirk quirks up into a smile. Keith looks up from the notepad and into Lance’s eyes, “Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

The air feels heavier. Keith opens and closes his mouth. Every detail magnified by a thousand. Lance tries to memorize all of it: the tiniest hint of freckles on Keith’s cheeks, the upturn of his nose, the long curls of his eyelashes. Time is frozen.

The moment doesn’t last. Keith’s pager starts beeping angrily. “I should go do this,” he says, vaguely gesturing in the directing of the ER.

“Right,” Lance bites his lip. If only he and Keith could have more than five minutes in a room together. “You should.”

Keith says, “I’ll see you.” His eyes dart from Lance’s eyes to his lips.

“See you.”

And just like that, Lance makes it through his first shift as an intern.

They all do. Pidge, Hunk, Meghan, and him. They seem like good people. Hopefully decent enough to be doctors. Lance likes them.

He thinks Aunt Carolyn would like them too. Hopefully, one day--not soon, but eventually--he can learn to be half the surgeon she was. Carolyn McClain was brilliant. She was smart and talented and too stubborn for her own good. She never gave up.

Maybe Lance won’t sell the house. Not right away, at least. Maybe he’ll get a couple roommates until he finishes sifting through the mountains of boxes she left him. There has to be a reason she chose him over any of his sisters. All three of them deserve it more than he does.

But Lance thinks Aunt Carolyn would be proud of him. She was the most supportive when he got accepted to med school.

He hopes she’d be proud of him, anyway.


End file.
